Search This Blog

Monday, July 17, 2017

Video Rental Stores - The Best Way To Temporarily Expand Your Gaming Library

One
of the highlights of the weekend as a kid was being able to do practically
anything my heart desired. Well, within
reason anyway. As much as I would have
loved to have sprayed graffiti all over the town with a can of purple spray
paint, I'm fairly sure the local police would frown upon that.

Of
course, I had to make sure that all of my homework was done before I could have
the freedom to do what I wanted (though admittedly, I would purposely wait
until Sunday night to do some of it because I couldn't be bothered to work on
it during the weekend.)

Kids:
Don't be like me. Do your homework as
soon as possible. You'll save yourself
the stress of typing out an eight page history essay while pulling an
all-nighter the day before the assignment is due - though, I did get a B+ on
that paper, so what do I know?

Anyway,
my favourite activity when I was a kid was to go down to the little convenience
store around the corner from where I used to live as a kid. I believe it was called Darling's Variety. Aside from spending part of my allowance on
Salt and Vinegar potato chips, I'd use the rest to rent a video game that they
had in stock.

And
yes, there was a time in which you could rent video games for the low cost of
$2.25 per day!

To
be fair, they also had movies as well, but I was never really into the box
office scene as much as I was the video game scene. Besides, the little store I went to had a limited selection of
both. Sadly, that store closed up when
I was in the sixth grade, and after that I would rent games from some of the
local video rental places and from major chains like Blockbuster or Jumbo
Video. I tended to prefer Blockbuster a
bit more though, as they let you rent games for a whole week. Which came in really handy given that you
cannot beat "Final Fantasy VI" in one day. At least, not without eating, sleeping, or peeing anyway.

Of
course, nowadays you'd be hard pressed to find a store that still rents videos
and video games. These days, sites like
Netflix have cornered the monopoly on movie renting and streaming. As well, there are literally hundreds of
sites that offer free emulators that you can use to download video games - not
to mention purchasing games directly from the Internet for the XBOX,
PlayStation, and Nintendo.

But
back in the days in which I was a kid...the idea of renting video games was
just absolutely magical.

For one, my family was not flush with money by any means. They couldn't afford to buy a new video game
every month - and I certainly didn't expect them to either. I mean, this is coming from someone whose
first video game system was ten years older (and you can read about that story
by clicking HERE- one of the first blog entries I wrote, matter of
fact!). I saved up to buy my Nintendo
for several months when I was nine, and it was so worth the purchase!

Because
once I had the Nintendo in my possession, it opened me up to a world of endless
possibilities. Or, at the very least it
allowed me to rent video games.

I still recall the first video games I rented from Darling's after I bought my
Nintendo. As it turned out, I still had
enough money to rent three games from there, so I settled on "Bubble
Bobble", "Tetris", and "Rampage". Yeah, quite the triad of games. One game you shot at everyone with green and
blue bubbles, one game you tried to make lines with coloured blocks, and one
game you tried to destroy the entire United States one skyscraper at a
time. It was great!

Of course, I had to make sure that all the games were returned by 1:00 the
following afternoon, because if I didn't I'd be billed for an extra day, which
the nine-year-old me couldn't afford.

Well, at least until Super Mario 3 came out...then I rented it every other day
until I received the game as a Christmas gift!

So,
what are some of your favourite stories involving video rental stores and video
game rental stores? Feel free to share
them here!